For the purposes of this poll an "intact core returned" or "successfully landed first stage" means that the stage returned from boost and executed a landing in which it did not topple over, blow up, strike on impact, or disintegrate. There has to be a picture of the stage standing erect and at rest. If it immediately topples after that, or is damaged in handling it still counts. If SpaceX reuses a stage and lands it again, each successful landing of the stage counts as a returned core.

The landing can be RTLS or on an ASDS or some as yet unspecified thing (I'll modify this if that happens)

Note that a Falcon Heavy has 3 cores. It's possible that 0, 1, 2, or 3 could be returned successfully. it's possible that some do a RTLS and some land on an ASDS. Each core that landed successfully counts as one core. Each core expended, whether by choice, or by accident, or that fails to remain upright and stationary long enough to get a picture, counts as zero.

Just as with the number of flights poll, suborbital tests do not count. That is the following things don't count: a launch abort test, a first stage only launch test, a test at Spaceport America if that comes to pass... the stage has to be one that participated in a mission intended to be orbital. Whether the mission itself is a success doesn't matter. The second stage can blow up one second after MECO (or even before, although surviving that and returning might be a bit harder) and as long as the first stage gets home, it counts. (For FH if the center core blows up on separation, but the side cores return, that's 2 cores returned)

Hopefully that makes things clear. You may not agree with my definitions, or wish they were different but these are the ones being used so take that into account. These are the same definitions as last year.

« Last Edit: 08/26/2017 05:20 AM by Lar »

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"I think it would be great to be born on Earth and to die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact." -Elon Musk"We're a little bit like the dog who caught the bus" - Musk after CRS-8 S1 successfully landed on ASDS OCISLY

They demonstrated cadence at the Cape before the mishap, if they can quickly get back to that cadence, and propagate that to Vandy, 16 won't be hard at all... as long as there isn't another mishap. Of that I think two will be FH. So that's 14+6 first stages, and I think 80% recovery of those is not unreasonable, so I went 16 recovered stages too.

16 stages recovered...

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"I think it would be great to be born on Earth and to die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact." -Elon Musk"We're a little bit like the dog who caught the bus" - Musk after CRS-8 S1 successfully landed on ASDS OCISLY

10 recoveries of the 15 launches I guessed at. A few mishaps, and some deliberate sacrifices for extra performance.

I agree with your reasons for adjustment but I have different numbers. I think 19 cores (15 launches including two FH). Don't see any performance sacrifice being necessary with FH but central core may be tricky so I'll say 5 out of 6 cores recovered. For the other 13 cores I'd say 3 lost for performance and 3 due to mishaps (probably at least one re-used core in there) so that's 7 more recovered for a total of 12.

7 out of 10 is a good majority for my predictions, so I went with 7 successful landings and 3 RUDs; one of the RUDs might be one of the Falcon Heavy cores on its demo flight. I'm guessing one of the boosters could have an issue while the other booster and the central core make it in one piece each.

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"Liftoff of Falcon 9: the world's first reflight of an orbital-class rocket."

Voted 15 launches and 10 recovered cores.The second is even a wilder guess than the first.This looks like a great bingo game. Are you listening HeloDriver and DanW?

How is this a bingo game? Not quite clear on that

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"I think it would be great to be born on Earth and to die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact." -Elon Musk"We're a little bit like the dog who caught the bus" - Musk after CRS-8 S1 successfully landed on ASDS OCISLY